The background description includes information that may be useful in understanding the present invention. It is not an admission that any of the information provided herein is prior art or relevant to the presently claimed invention, or that any publication specifically or implicitly referenced is prior art.
When a company has a series of tasks that need to be completed, a manager typically allocates employees towards each task. Computer scheduling systems, for example Microsoft Outlook®, can be helpful to visualize such schedules. For example, a manager could use a computer scheduling system to block off specific times of the day for employees to perform certain tasks, and assign specific employees to that task. Each employee would then have a calendar of tasks to do throughout each day, week, and month, which could be easily visualized and organized. In order for a manager to assign specific employees to each task, however, the manager needs to manually track each employee's schedule and allocate each employee to the appropriate task.
US 2009/0315735 to Bhavani teaches a computer system for managing patient flow in a hospital, where a manager could tag specific patients, medical employees, and resources with RFID chips to determine where each patient, employee, and resource is, and allocate each resource accordingly as needed. For example, if there are too many patients waiting for an examination room, a patient could be automatically relocated to an examination room with a shorter line by sending a message to an available employee to redirect that patient. Bhavani, however, requires the system to manually track each patient, employee, and resource by a unique identifier.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,587,329 to Thompson teaches a computer system for managing a health clinic, where a manager could input a series of attributes into a computer that an on-duty nurse needs to have to accomplish a specific task. The system then matches available nurses with those requirements with the task in order to accomplish the task, and can send out schedules to each nurse, letting that nurse know what tasks to perform.
Additionally, these systems and other prior-art systems fail to continue to ensure a device viability for a scheduled task as the schedule develops and manage the functions of the devices such that the devices are capable of use for the scheduled tasks with changing schedules. The prior-art systems similarly fail to provide for the seamless inclusion of devices having processing and communications capabilities with legacy or other ‘dumb’ devices that have no such capacity.
Bhavani, Thompson, and all other extrinsic materials discussed herein are incorporated by reference to the same extent as if each individual extrinsic material was specifically and individually indicated to be incorporated by reference. Where a definition or use of a term in an incorporated reference is inconsistent or contrary to the definition of that term provided herein, the definition of that term provided herein applies and the definition of that term in the reference does not apply.
Thus, there is a need for a scheduling system that provide simultaneous management of functions of connected devices for scheduled tasks including adjustments of output and functionality for those connected development, optimized exception resolution for these devices, and for the incorporation of non-connected “dumb” devices into an online scheduling system within a facility.